Lukas and Baffert Are Powered by More Than Just One Horse

There’s a life outside the Triple Crown for trainers Wayne Lukas and Bob Baffert.

“This is what helps me and Lukas,” Baffert said. “We’ve both got a lot of horses in training. If we had only one horse, the one we’re running in the Belmont [Stakes], we’d be going nuts.”

A week from Saturday, their horses will be battling in the Belmont Stakes, when Lukas saddles Charismatic for his Triple Crown bid and Baffert tries to thwart him with the filly Silverbulletday. But Thursday at Churchill Downs, there were more pressing priorities. Baffert and Mike Pegram, the owner of Silverbulletday and Real Quiet, were hurrying the 100 miles to Cincinnati for a midday flight to Boston, where Real Quiet is the odds-on favorite Saturday in the $600,000 Massachusetts Handicap at Suffolk Downs. And Lukas, having grazed the unflappable Charismatic for 20 minutes on the Churchill Downs backstretch, turned to discussing the Metropolitan Mile, a $500,000 race he’ll try to win Saturday with Cat Thief at Belmont Park.

With Laura Lukas, his wife, Lukas has even more Triple Crown diversions: They’re campaigning a string of quarter horses at Los Alamitos, where one of them, with Wayne Lukas on hand, ran second in a $400,000 race a week ago.

“Many trainers look for a golf game when they’re not at the track,” said Bob Lewis, the co-owner of Charismatic. “Wayne doesn’t play golf. His hobby, sort of, is his quarter horses, and that’s wonderful, as far as I’m concerned.”

The Metropolitan might be just the antidote for Cat Thief, who became the forgotten 3-year-old of the Lukas outfit after Charismatic--once his less attractive stablemate--won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. When Charismatic went off at 31-1 in the Derby, Cat Thief was 7-1, based on a succession of solid--though non-winning--races, dating to a third-place finish in November’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile here. Then in the Preakness, Derby winner Charismatic was 8-1 at post time, the fifth choice in the 13-horse field, while Cat Thief was the second choice, after Menifee, at 5-1.

At Pimlico, Cat Thief was one of the pace factors and was still in contention at the top of the stretch, but he faltered badly and finished seventh. A horse with $800,000 in purses, he has won only two of 13 starts and hasn’t had a victory since October.

“I think he’ll run well in New York,” Lukas said. “Three-year-olds do well in that race, and because he’s only three, he gets in with only 111 pounds.”

That’s seven pounds less than Affirmed Success, who’s the high weight under handicap conditions. Lukas won the Metropolitan in 1996 with Honour And Glory, when he was a 3-year-old. The most memorable Metropolitan winner was Conquistador Cielo, who ran the mile in 1:33 to win the stake in 1982, then came back five days later to win again, giving trainer Woody Stephens his first of five consecutive Belmont victories. Lukas said that no matter how well Cat Thief might do Saturday, he wouldn’t wheel him back in the Belmont.

At Suffolk, Real Quiet, with 121 pounds, is the high weight in the six-horse field, with Behrens at 118 pounds and then a drop to Running Stag with 113. It will be Real Quiet’s first start since he won the Pimlico Special on May 8.

After Saturday, Real Quiet is expected to run in the Hollywood Gold Cup on June 27. A win at Suffolk would push his earnings over the $3-million mark. Bought by Pegram for $17,000, last year’s Derby-Preakness winner has turned out to be one of racing’s biggest bargains.

Silverbulletday, who cost Pegram $155,000, has earned $2.2 million.

“Every time, it’s been the horses that I haven’t paid much for that have done the best,” Pegram said. “That’s the way this game is. You just never know.”

Pegram, 47, is the owner of 22 McDonald’s franchises in Washington state. Thursday morning, waiting for Baffert to finish some last-minute business at the barn, he was stuffing one tissue after another into both nostrils.

“I’m allergic,” he said. “To horses, timothy . . . and work.”

He wasn’t joking about the first two. Pegram grew up blue-collar, in an Indiana town about an hour’s drive from here, and sometimes he still practices the thrift that came naturally during his formative years. Around the Baffert barn, they rag Pegram about flying a no-frills airline to Kentucky from Arizona, where he has a home.

Somebody asked if Pegram would be staying at the swank Garden City Hotel near the track during Belmont week.

“Actually,” Pegram said, “I’m looking for something else.”

A better rate, maybe?

“No, it’s not that,” he said. “It’s just that I’m 0-for-the-Belmont at the Garden City.”

Horse Racing Notes

On his final day of riding at Hollywood Park on a regular basis, jockey Gary Stevens won with his only mount, directing heavily favored People Princess to victory in Thursday’s fourth race. It was the 1,200th win at Hollywood Park for Stevens, who will ride Real Quiet in the Massachusetts Handicap on Saturday, then head to England to begin riding for trainer Sir Michael Stoute. Stevens is expected back in California for some stakes engagements before the meet ends in July. . . . A.P. Assay will make her first start since finishing fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint on Nov. 7 in the $100,000 Desert Stormer Handicap on Saturday. Also entered in the six-furlong Desert Stormer are Woodman’s Dancer, Funallover, Corona Lake, Censored and Bella Chiarra.